- THE GREEN ECONOMIST -
Peter Bartelmus
Articles
This page shows the latest published articles. I welcome requests for the latter, and any comments are greatly appreciated.
“The future we want: green growth or sustainable development”, Environmental Development 7, 2013.
Green growth is a key theme of last year's Rio+20 conference. There is, however, confusion about what should be sustained: Is it all encompassing development? Is it economic growth, greened or otherwise? Or is it humanwell-being? This commentary compares these concepts within a framework of sustainability categories. The reality test of measurability points to green growth rather than all-inclusive wealth, welfare or holistic development.
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“What’s beyond GDP?”, Dimensions, May 2014. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269106769_What%27s_beyond_GDP
http://www.ihdp.unu.edu/docs/Publications/Secretariat/Update-Dimensions/Dimensions%201-2014%20Beyond%20GDP.pdf
Human well-being is beyond GDP. It is also beyond measurement. Greened national accounts can assess the environmental sustainability of economic performance and growth. Sustaining development needs to be left to politics.
02
“Environmental-economic accounting – progress and digression in the SEEA revisions”, Review of Income and Wealth 60 (4), 2014, 887-904
The 1992 Earth Summit and its message of sustainable development drove the launching of a System for integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting, the SEEA. Since then, sustainable development and the SEEA have given way to green growth and green economy indicators in the latest 2012 Summit. A lengthy revision process has now produced a curtailed “SEEA central framework.” The new framework focuses on expenditures for environmental protection and resource management, and stocks and flows of “economic” resources; both are covered by the conventional national accounts. Environmental degradation, notably from pollution, is left to “experimental” ecosystem accounts. Further revision of the SEEA should reverse this retrenchment from integrative environmental– economic accounting. A comprehensive satellite system, rather than a limited statistical standard, might put the SEEA back on the policy agenda.
03
Do we need ecosystem accounts?, EcologicalEconomics 118 (2015), 292-298
online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.12.026
The internationally adopted System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) measures the interaction between the economy and the natural environment. Its central framework accounts for the depletion of natural resources, but omits environmental degradation, notably from pollution. A recent “companion volume” on “experimental ecosystem accounting” addresses ecosystem degradation, but excludes the depletion of natural assets. Its physical accounts, notably on land cover and use, could support the management and conservation of ecosystems. Policies of sustainable economic performance and growth require, however, integrative information on both depletion and degradation at national and sectoral levels. Integrated environmental and economic accounts can provide this information without the detour of ecosystem accounting.
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How bad is climate change? Environmental Development 14 (2015), 53-62
online: doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.01.001
Listen to audioslides: http://audioslides.elsevier.com//ViewerLarge.aspx?source=1&doi=10.1016/j.envdev.2015.01.001
Natural scientists and environmental organizations predict catastrophe if global warming continues at the current pace. Their indicators warn us about different hazards of climate change but fail to show their overall impact on human needs and well-being. Environmental economists model future costs and benefits of economic activities to compare them with the expected damage and mitigation costs of climate change. The wide range of their estimates reflects different model assumptions and controversial pricing of non-market effects. We do not know, therefore, the significance of climate change, especially in comparison to other environmental and socioeconomic costs and benefits. Integrated environmental-economic accounts can reduce the ambiguity of modelling by measuring the economic costs of climate change during a past accounting period. Climate policy rather than politics could be the result.
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'Sustainability metrics and their use' in: P.A. Victor and B. Dolter (2017), Handbook on Growth and Sustainability, Cheltenham, U.K. and Northampton MA, Edward Elgar (2017), pp. 59-84
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Confronting different categories of sustainability with physical, monetary and hybrid indicators obtains
a simple framework for sustainability metrics. Physical aggregates of ecological sustainability and compound indices of sustainable development suffer from problems of indicator selection, aggregation and the setting of judgmental sustainability standards. They can warn us about threats to sustainability but do not measure sustainability itself. Monetary indices and models of non-declining wealth and welfare resort to controversial valuations of well-being; they help conceptualize sustainability as capital maintenance but do not provide realistic policy advice. Greened national accounts measure the measurable, i.e. weak sustainability of produced and natural capital maintenance. Policy instruments of cost internalization and reinvestment can be set at the level of natural capital consumption.
07
Is America Down? [Working Paper]
America is not really down as claimed twenty years ago by the authors of the Genuine Progress Indicator. Alternative measures show continuing progress. Possible exceptions are rather subjective happiness indicators. Problems of measuring human wellbeing indicate that we cannot assess the state and trend of human welfare in the USA.
Keywords : genuine progress indicator, comprehensive wealth and welfare, green accounting indicators
Paper available on request: peterbartelmus@gmail.com